Stres en die beroepsvrou: 'n fortigene ondersoek

English: The aim of this investigation was to examine the work arid life' circumstances of career women. Career women are subject to a large variety of stressors due to gender-based discrimination and an unequal distribution of resources, such as material resources and power. In contrast to the expectation that women's career involvement will exert a negative influence on their well-being due to excessive rolerelated commitments and discrimination experienced by many of them, it appears that their psychological and physical well-being is better than that of non-working women. In this investigation, the focus was on the interaction between stressors women are exposed to, the resistance resources that they have at their disposal, as well as the coping strategies that they use to overcome stressors in determining their experiences of level of job stress and satisfaction with life. The integrated stress and coping model posited by Moos (1994) seems to represent a comprehensive description of the stress and coping process, which is related to the transactional approach to the study of stress, and, moreover, ties in well with a fortigenic paradigm because it emphasises the role of resources for coping and coping strategies in the stress-coping process. In carrying out the empirical investigation, a cross-sectional survey was conducted involving 732 high-level career women who had at least Gr 11 school training. Their stress level and causes of stress within and outside the work situation were measured using the Experience of Work and Life Circumstances Questionnaire (Van Zyl, 1991), while the Sense of Coherence Scale (Antonovsky, 1987), as well as the Fortitude Questionnaire (Pretorius, 1997) was used to measure the subjects' personal (i.e. sense of coherence and self-appraisal), as well as contextual resources (i.e. family support and general social support). The COPE-scale (Carver et al., 1989) was used to measure coping strategies. Satisfaction with Life was measured using the Satisfaction with Life Questionnaire (Diener et al., 1985). It was found that the stress levels of women in the group under investigation were inclined to be high and that their level of satisfaction with life was lower than the levels reported for comparable groups. They also reported more work-related stressors, especially with regard to Career Matters, and Remuneration and fringe benefits. Their personal and contextual resistance resources coincided to a large extent with the findings for other groups and they also used a variety of problemfocused and emotionally-focused coping strategies. Significant racial differences were found with regard to stress level, level of satisfaction with life, work- and environment-related stressors, resistance resources and coping strategies. Some statistically significant differences were also found when women of different maritalstatus categories and career categories were compared with regard to non-workrelated and work-related stressors, personal resources such as self-appraisal and a sense of coherence, as well as certain coping strategies. The results indicated that the level of satisfaction with life and level of work-related stress yielded a significant negative correlation. Based on a main component factor analysis of satisfaction with life and level of work-related stress, the following five factors were selected for inclusion in performing a hierarchical regression analysis of satisfaction with life and work-related stress: Stressors outside the context of work, Stressors in the workrelated context, Resistance resources, Active coping strategies and Destructive coping strategies. Demographic factors that exhibit a high correlation with satisfaction with life and work-related stress were included as a sixth factor. However, it appears that the above-mentioned factors make a larger contribution in explaining the variance in level of work-related stress than in satisfaction with life. As far as the variance in level of satisfaction with life is concerned, demographic factors, such as race; the extent that the women received emotional and tangible support from their marriage partners; and resistance resources, such as sense of coherence and stressors outside the work, made a statistically significant contribution. The variance in the level of a work-related stress was explained to a statistically significant extent in particular by stressors in non-work-related context such as psychosocial problems, social problems and poor infrastructure as well as by stressors in the context of work such as organisational functioning, and resistance resources such as a sense of coherence.